Savor the Hot Taste of Life with Cannery Row at The Western Stage & The Sunset Cultural Center in Carmel!

The Western Stage continues its 30^th Anniversary on August 5^th with John Steinbeck’s acclaimed comedy Cannery Row, adapted for the stage by J.R. Hall. Mack and the Boys are throwing their buddy Doc a party, and its sure not a party you’ll want to miss! Produced to coincide with The National Steinbeck Festival, Cannery Row plays Fri. & Sat. at 8pm and Sun. at 2pm through August 27^th in the Studio Theater, Hartnell College Performing Arts Center. To buy tickets, visit westernstage.org or call the TWS box office at 755-6816. On September 16-18, the party continues with an extended run at the Sunset Center in Carmel. To order tickets for this special event, visit sunsetcenter.org or call 620-2048. (139 Word PSA)

In Celebration of the 60^th Anniversary of Cannery Row’s publication and the 25^th National Steinbeck Festival, The Western Stage (TWS) is remounting J.R. Hall’s adaptation under the direction of Richard Kuhlman and featuring Actors’ Equity Association (AEA) Guest Artist Kent Burnham in the role of Doc. Performances at TWS run August 5^th – August 27^th in The Studio Theater, Hartnell College Performing Arts Center, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 2pm. The party will continue with a special extended run at the Sunset Cultural Center in Carmel September 16 – 18.

The character of Doc is portrayed by AEA Guest Artist Kent Burnham, who is very excited to be returning to TWS after playing Adam/Aaron in the 2000 production of East of Eden. Burnham holds a B.A. in Theatre from Hofstra University in New York and an M.F.A. in acting from The Shakespeare Theatre/Academy for Classical Acting in Washington D.C. In addition to several television and film credits that include Melrose Place and General Hospital, he has worked at regional theatres around the country including, among others, The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, The Denver Civic Theatre, and Ford’s Theatre. Some of his favorite roles include Jason in Wit, Costard in Love’s Labor’s Lost, and Treplev in The Seagull.

John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row is directed by Richard Kuhlman, also a member of Actors’ Equity, whose past TWS credits include Mask of Moriarty (1999) and last years highly successful production of Tartuffe. Kuhlman has a great deal of experience bringing Steinbeck to the stage having written and directed Tortilla Flat for TWS in 2002; he also directed Of Mice and Men in 2003, and performed in productions of East of Eden at both TWS and Actors Theatre of Louisville.

J.R. Hall was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, receiving his B.A. in Speech Communications from the University of Pittsburgh and his M.F.A. in Playwriting from Carnegie Mellon University. He is currently on the faculty of the Community College of Allegheny County drama department where he teaches Communications, Theatre and Film. Other plays of his that have been produced include: The Chimes of War, The Principal of the Thing, The Case of the Missing Case, and the musicals Hubba! Hubba! and Pittsville. He is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America.

Like the 1995 production, which enjoyed a highly successful extended run at the Outdoor Forest Theatre, this production of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row will also extend its run at the Sunset Cultural Center in Carmel. Performances will be September 16^th and 17^th at 8 pm, and the 18^th at 2 pm. Tickets for this special performance can be purchased through the Sunset Center at sunsetcenter.org or by calling (831) 620-2048. Tickets are $30 reserved or $20 discount reserved for groups, seniors, juniors, and military with ID.

“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.” So opens John Steinbeck’s 1945 classic Cannery Row, and the novel lives right up to what the opening line promises the story will be—a nostalgic look back at a far away place that he had not seen in many years. During World War II, Steinbeck had traveled throughout the European theatre as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, documenting the horrors he witnessed in a series of articles that would eventually be compiled in the book Once There Was a War. While there, a group of soldiers asked Steinbeck to write something funny that had nothing to do with the misery of battle. The result was Cannery Row, a lighthearted story in many respects, but, in another, a war novel in its own right in that its inspiration is the desire to provide emotional relief to a country recovering from the trauma of one of the most nightmarish military conflicts in history.

Although Cannery Row contains a distinct narrative, the novel (and thus the play) is a portrait of a Cannery Row that was already beginning to pass into the night when Steinbeck began scratching out the novel on his notepad. Now, except for a few historical buildings and markers, Steinbeck’s Cannery Row is but a distant memory preserved by a few photographs and the tales that Steinbeck immortalized in Cannery Row and its sequel Sweet Thursday. His is not a marketplace filled with souvenir shops, high-end restaurants, and tourist attractions; it is a weather beaten street filled with weedy lots, sardine canneries, whorehouses, flophouses, and biological laboratories. It is not a trendy, hot spot teaming with honeymooners, bicyclers, kayakers, and service workers, but rather a neighborhood inhabited by drunks, artists, whores, cannery workers, and an eccentric marine biologist. It is not a strip mall that marches to the music of ringing cash registers, but rather a veritable tide pool of humanity that waltzes to the music of the waves, and the tide, and the phonograph in Doc’s Western Biological Laboratory.

Yet, it is important to remember that despite the fact that the stories told in Cannery Row have their roots in the experiences Steinbeck had while a denizen there himself, it is not a pure historical document, but a work of fiction. Characters and events are exaggerated, amalgamated, and, sometimes, perhaps even made up for dramatic or humorous effect. For instance, the story recounted in Cannery Row about how Mack and the Boys use a female cat in a cage to capture a bunch of tomcats is later attributed a single individual Steinbeck called Al in his essay “About Doc Ricketts”. The character of Doc is also an interesting example as well. Although based on his close friend and intellectual collaborator Edward Flanders Robb Ricketts (1897-1948), there are substantial differences between the real life Doc and the fictional Doc Steinbeck presents. (Some have even gone so far as to speculate that the fictional Doc is a composite of Ed Ricketts and Steinbeck.) The Doc in Cannery Row is a longtime bachelor with no children who in Sweet Thursday painfully struggles to write a single scientific article. The real life Doc Ricketts, however, was married several times, did indeed have at least three children, and, although not a natural writer, did publish several notable essays, a still popular book on marine biology entitled Between Pacific Tides, and collaborated with Steinbeck on The Log from the Sea of Cortez, about their 1940 expedition on the Western Flyer. What the fictional Doc certainly does share with the real Doc, however, is a love of art, philosophy, music, and people as well as science. Ed Ricketts’ real Pacific Biological Laboratory—the fictional is called Western Biological— was a virtual salon of great thinkers, and his personal philosophies on the “Organic Universe” and his concept of “Breaking Through” not only influenced Steinbeck, but also left its mark on noted mythologist Joseph Campbell as well. Finally, and most importantly, the fictional Doc is just as much a fundamental member of the community of Cannery Row as the real Doc was: drinking with the local bums, bandaging up people after brawls at the local whore house, and extending a helping hand to his fellow man. Ultimately, both Docs, the real and the fictional, are as much poet-philosophers as they are scientists. (For more information on Doc Ricketts and his personal and ecological philosophies, see supplemental article.)

J.R. Hall’s adaptation first premiered on TWS’ main stage in 1995. Despite its warm reception, the artistic staff felt that the show, which boasted a cast of 50-plus actors and huge set featuring several multi-story buildings, was too large for such a simple story. The new production, which has been substantially trimmed down and revised under the guidance of dramaturge William Wolak, will be presented in the Studio Theater and on the Sunset Center stages with a cast of 20. This leaner script and smaller playing area will hopefully highlight John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row’s many colorful characters and subtle story more powerfully than the original main stage production could.

Reprising their roles from the original production 10 years ago are Ron Cacas as the stingy grocer Lee Chong and Nina Capriola as the whorehouse madam Dora Flood. In addition, several other cast members from the first incarnation of the show are returning as well in new roles including Jerry Gill as Hughie, Bumper Metcalfe as Eddie, and Dan Tarker as Hazel. TWS staff member Chris Graham performed as Mack in the workshop production in 1994. All are extremely pleased to be returning to John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and are honored to be able to participate in the next stage of this adaptation’s development process.

The Western Stage continues its 2005 season in the fall with Lisa Loomer’s dark comedy The Waiting Room in September, Victor Villianseñor’s family epic Rain of Gold in October, Anton Chekhov’s classic comedy The Cherry Orchard in November, and Kenneth Graham’s childhood favorite Wind in the Willows in December.

Dan Tarker Literary Associate